Ezra Klein: July 25, 2010 - July 31, 2010

Recap: Congress is cutting food stamps to pay for Medicaid and education; Obama's problem is that his accomplishments are unpopular; and Lindsey Graham did not listen to Lindsey Graham on immigration. Elsewhere: 1) Mark Zandi and John Taylor debate the...

I've spent the day calling around to better understand why the Senate plans to slash funding for food stamps (alongside a few other budget items, including some corporate tax breaks) to pay for relief to states. There's an answer,...

President Obama's remarks at various Michigan automobile plants today get to the heart of the task facing the administration as we enter the 2010 election. The White House doesn't lack for accomplishments. What it lacks is popular accomplishments. The...

In April, I defended Lindsey Graham when he threatened to abandon climate change if Harry Reid moved on immigration first. Graham's tactic seemed extreme, but I understood his position. As one of the GOP's most prominent supporters of immigration...

By Dylan Matthews michaelh81 asks: If we let the Bush tax cuts expire for those making more than $250,000, what will be the distribution of those increased taxes? How much of that increase will millionaire's pay? How much is the...

Benjy Sarlin has a good interview with Peter G. Peterson, the deficit-hating billionaire who many liberals see as one of the primary threats to Medicare and Social Security. In the interview, Peterson comes off as more reasonable than all that:...

Another day, another ugly economic report. Today, we learned that annualized GDP growth over the past quarter was 2.4 percent. Not nothing, but quite a bit lower than the 3.7 percent we saw in the first quarter. More worrying, consumer...

Howard Gleckman on the likely end game for the Bush tax cuts: Unlike most recent congressional debates, the Democrats may have the procedural upper hand this time. With health care, for instance, Republicans would have “won” by blocking congressional...

It's the Sophie's choice of budget decisions: Should we cut Medicaid? Fire teachers? Or slash food stamps? How about all three? In order to get less Medicaid and teacher funding than we actually need, we're cutting food stamps by...

Dean Baker critiques the Zandi/Blinder study from the left. "While the analysis of the stimulus is pretty standard and very much in keeping with other estimates," he writes, "this is not the case with the analysis of the financial sector...

An influential regional Federal Reserve bank president warns that expansionary action may be needed to prevent deflation; GOP senators blocked a bill that would've expanded lending to small businesses; Democratic senators are cutting food stamps to pay for Medicaid...

Recap: Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, explains what the GOP would do to help the economy recover. And in an interview from last week, Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, lays out the...

By Dylan Matthews Patrick_M asks: What is the truth about the CLASS Act? Before I get into the debate over the CLASS Act, I should explain what it is. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act is a provision...

Paul Ryan is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, and one of the party's most influential voices on the economy. And with Republicans likely to pick up a lot of seats -- and maybe even the House --...

The economic recovery is sputtering, as Neil Irwin documents. Economists think growth between April and June was 2 to 2.5 percent, which is anemic at best. Job growth has been disappointing. Lately, I've been asking economists about this, and everyone...

My interviews with Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi focused, probably to the great boredom of my readers, on the nature of the model they used to estimate the effects of different stimulus and financial policies. I did that because this...

Alan Blinder is co-director of Princeton's Center for Economic Policy Studies and formerly served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. We spoke on Wednesday about the paper (pdf) he co-authored with Mark Zandi attempting to comprehensively...

Ross Douthat reminds me of another paragraph I'd wanted to quote from Atul Gawande's article on dying: Like many people, I had believed that hospice care hastens death, because patients forgo hospital treatments and are allowed high-dose narcotics to combat...

Matt Miller is about as credentialed a deficit hawk as has ever walked the earth, so when he delivers this hard a blow to the fiscal commission, it's worth paying attention: I don't want to overreact. I'd hate to prematurely...

Matt Bai had a smart piece yesterday arguing that Peter Orszag "promoted and carried out an effort by the White House to pry away from Congress some of the responsibility for making hard decisions, especially when it comes to...

By Dylan Matthews Ross Cohen asks: Republicans keep fighting for the Bush tax cuts with a talking point about small business owners filing as individuals. I've heard 50 and 75% quoted as the number of $250k filers that are actually...

A judge has blocked key provisions of the Arizona immigration law as it was slated to take effect today; the White House is preparing for an overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac next year; it's not clear whether...

Recap: Mark Zandi says the stimulus and the financial rescue added 8.5 million jobs and increased GDP by 6.5 percent; how to keep filibuster reform from becoming a power grab; and the limits of techo-optimism on global warming. Elsewhere: 1)...

Here's your big thought of the day: George W. Bush and Barack Obama did a pretty good job stabilizing the economy and kickstarting recovery after the financial crisis began. That, at least, is the conclusion of a paper (pdf)...

Jon Chait punctures the pretensions of the U.S. Senate: Most Democratic Senators, especially older ones, are institutionalists. They believe in the Senate as a rarified place of bipartisanship and thoughtful compromise. They also have come to value rules that increase...

By Dylan Matthews This morning, I went to the latest in a series of Senate Rules Committee hearings on filibusters and holds. This one focused on two reform proposals, offered by Sens. Michael Bennet and Frank Lautenberg. Bennet's proposal is...

Megan McArdle thinks progressives should want the filibuster left alone: [Democrats] risk empowering a Republican Senate majority -- if not in 2010 (which I think is very unlikely) then in 2012. It's absolutely true that Reagan and others had less...

Red State digs up a post of mine from 2005 calling Bill Frist's effort to do away with the judicial filibuster a "power grab," and contrasts that unfavorably with my current advocacy for filibuster reform. One problem: I've also described...

At least if you want to get elected: Researchers showed voters pairs of candidates from 122 elections in Mexico and Brazil. The participants in the study were asked which candidate would be a better elected official. Respondents in India and...

"Sometimes," Ross Douthat says, "it makes sense to wait, get richer, and then try to muddle through." He's talking about global warming, and giving voice to a common line of thinking. Sure, the argument goes, global warming is real....

As Atul Gawande writes in a difficult but important article, our system is not set up for it: In 2008, the national Coping with Cancer project published a study showing that terminally ill cancer patients who were put on a...

After a final push from the White House, the DISCLOSE Act mustered 57 votes, failing to break a filibuster. Meanwhile, BP has detailed its plans for financing the Gulf's recovery from the oil spill; Harry Reid's energy bill lacks...

Recap: How to end the filibuster with 51 votes; possible White House responses to a Republican win; and why you should care about Basel III. Elsewhere: 1) Atul Gawande on the end of life. 2) A less abstract take on...

By Dylan Matthews FormerSwingVoter asks: Any idea what the economic impact of an employee-only payroll tax holiday would be? Since it’s a Republican idea, it might actually stand a chance of passing, assuming they didn't actually call it “stimulus". As...

Church attendance rises when the economy slips: Every day, the economist Daniel Hungerman looks at the graph that hangs above his desk at the University of Notre Dame. One jagged line goes down and up. This is America’s gross domestic...

Now that Dodd-Frank has passed, there's not a lot of interest in following a meeting of international bank regulators. But Basel III matters -- some argue that it matters more even than Dodd-Frank -- and Brookings's Doug Elliott, author of...

It's economically inefficient: During World War II ... The Army needed warm bodies to throw at a dubious boondoggle that they hoped would make supplying China easier, and so they sent battalions full of black troops who had been drafted...

If you can't manage the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, you can't manage the 67 votes to change the rules and end the filibuster. At least in theory. But in practice, there's another path open to the Senate's...

This graph comes from the CBO's report on immigrants, education and employment. The main thing you'll notice is that highly educated native-born women are employed at much higher rates than immigrants, while native-born men are employed at slightly lower rates...

Mark Schmitt wonders what Republicans will do if they capture the House of Representatives in November. Shut down the government? Nah. Repeal health-care reform? Unlikely. Pass Paul Ryan's budget plan? Absolutely not. Agree to a major and unpopular deficit...

International negotiators have agreed on broad principles for the Basel III banking regulation accord; the Senate version of the DISCLOSE Act is still a few votes short of passage; the House is packing its schedule until the August recess...

By Dylan Matthews Today, Ezra previewed next January's fight over filibuster reform, pointed out that congressional inaction tends to give more power to regulators and courts, and noted the Massachusetts health reform's shortcomings regarding cost control. 1) An Economist roundtable...

I'm a few days late -- at least in Internet time -- in responding to Michael Cannon's post on the Massachusetts health-care system, so apologies for that. Let's start with an important technical question: I said that "the [cost]...

1) Dottie Rosenbaum of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities argues that food stamps are an effective stimulus program. 2) William Gale and Benjamin Harris of the Tax Policy Center defend a value-added tax. 3) Richard Price of the...

By Dylan Matthews cstar asks: Following up from the desk's response on Friday: If turnout among different income levels was homogeneous, would it be expected for Democrats to really dominate nationally? This is a tricky point, but cstar's right that...

There's been a fair amount of talk about all the innovative and odd techniques that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke could use to kick-start the economy, but Annie Lowrey rightly focuses on the most straightforward of the options: Bernanke could...

From the Awl's pseudonymous corporate bond analyst Carl Hegelman: As a corporate bond analyst, I get some perspective on this. My job is to analyze companies and try to figure out whether they can service their debt (pay interest and...

In June 2009, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed the House of Representatives with a slim majority. In July 2010, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, announced that the Senate couldn't find a supermajority for a companion piece of legislation. Cap-and-trade...

"I do detect some momentum gathering behind Tom Udall’s constitutional option for curbing the filibuster in January of 2011," writes Matthew Yglesias, who spent the weekend at Netroots Nation. I didn't go to Las Vegas, but I'm getting the...

There's a lot to be said about the 92,000 Afghanistan documents that WikiLeaks released this morning, but I'm not the guy to say it. Go read Danger Room for that. I am interested, however, in the press strategy behind the...

The original stimulus package should've been bigger. Rep. David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, says the Treasury Department originally asked for $1.4 trillion. Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, wanted $1.2 trillion. What we got...

Following the apparent death of cap and trade, a White House aide says that President Barack Obama will veto any bill limiting the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. That means that for now, the response to climate...